Policy —

Congressman calls for anti-Wikileaks offensive

A Congressman has called on the Obama administration to declare Wikileaks a …

As the fallout from this weekend's document drop continues, at least one US Congressman wants the US government to go on the offensive. Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who will be chairing the House's Homeland Security Committee come January, sent letters to Obama administration officials on Sunday, asking that Wikileaks and its public face, Julian Assange, be declared both terrorists and spies.

For the espionage accusations, King sent a letter to Eric Holder, the US Attorney General, requesting that he consider bringing charges under the Espionage Act, specifically a section that deals with "gathering, transmitting or losing defense information." The section provides a laundry list of ways of obtaining information that fall under the law, but highlights that they must be done with intent or reason to believe that it will do injury to the US.

According to King, Wikileaks fits the bill. The repeated leaks, King alleges, "manifests Mr. Assange’s purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan." His letter also points out that one of the site's sources, a Private Bradley Manning, has been charged under precisely this statute.

If espionage won't do, however, King has a backup plan: terrorism. In a separate letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he asks that the Department undertake a review to determine whether Wikileaks could be designated a Foreign Terrorist organization. The letter says that the site fits the bill since it's: a) foreign, b) engaged in "terrorism," and c) threatens US security. The terrorism bit comes from the Defense Department's determination that the previously leaked materials had provided "material support" to a large number of terrorist organizations.

Of course, catching up with Assange is easier said than done. King recommends that Clinton work with the Swedish government to see if there's any way that Assange "can be brought to justice." Even without a public spokesman, however, there's no guarantee that the leaking would come to an end.

The letter says that the site fits the bill since it's: a) foreign, b) engaged in "terrorism," and c) threatens US security. The terrorism bit comes from the Defense Department's determination that the previously leaked materials had provided "material support" to a large number of terrorist organizations.

Wow, he's really reaching there.

On another note: it really pisses me off with the ease of which people throw around the word terrorist or terrorism these days.

Glad to see that the new head of the Homeland Security Committee isn't some gung-ho nutter who will massively overreact to any security threat that arises. In a time when security and the freedoms held strongly by Americans are clashing, a clear head is really what is needed, someone who can reassure the public as well as provide intelligent insight into the security is something to be thankful for.

Thank god the midterm election has seen some incredibly appropriate figures who will intelligently run their respected committees come into play.

Let's see, does Wikileaks use violence or threats to induce widespread fear to cause political change? No. Also, someone might want to look up "jurisdiction" in the dictionary. This idiot is justifying China or Saudi Arabia policing people on US soil.

It's nice that King can point to a statute and all, but the law is more complicated than that. Whatever Congress wrote in that statute gets trumped by the First Amendment. Assange is not acting as a reporter in the most typcially understood sense of that word -- digesting information and writing it up as a summary for a periodical -- but the freedom of the press would probably still protect his activities, however much some people might not like it.

That's why it's usually the leakers, not the reporters, who are prosecuted. They do not have such protection.

The level of cluelessness and, at least as importantly in a Congressman, tone-deafness, is quite astounding. I think that overall, the Powers That Be have actually been doing ok in the court of public opinion over these leaks. While there has been plenty of semi-damning stuff, there has hardly been anything truly shocking and opinion changing, and my impression has been that much of the public buys the line that Wikileaks has caused significant damage for no real value. More subtle arguments regarding the limits of power, transparency, etc., don't tend to make for front-page material.

However, there is nothing for turning opinions about someone around like turning them into the underdog fighting against ludicrous charges and ludicrous odds. Imagine a minor, occasional petty thief, who gets caught doing a bit of shoplifting at a clothing store. Of course the public, inasmuch as it would care at all about such a minor case, would be against the thief, and support a proper punishment (repayment+fine, community service, perhaps a small amount of jail time as well). But instead, the government presses charges of grand larceny, and for good measure tries to pin some area murder/rape charges on the thief as well, and goes for life imprisonment etc. Remember, the thief is absolutely a criminal. Under normal circumstances, they'd be a nonentity, and get no support. Against such trumped up charges though and terribly unjust penalties there would be tremendous outcry. If they fought bravely and had the right luck/charisma against the government, the petty thief might even end up being a public hero. Trying to pin ridiculous charges, frame for additional false crimes, or make up evidence against, someone already in the wrong pretty much cannot do anything but help them.

It certainly does nothing to advance USA efforts against terrorism (the "War" on Terror, although there can't be any such thing) to simply pin the term on anything the authorities find unpleasant or use for any cause they wish to advance. It becomes hard to weigh even real risks seriously when the government just plain cries wolf so god damn much. "Oh what, the Department of Homeland Security raised the TERROR ALERT level to Polkadot Maroon? 'K." (goes back to whatever they're doing). What happens when there really is something that the government wants to get people's attention on? "OK everyone, we know the last 100 times we were just trying to get pet bills passed, boost our reelection chances, get expensive and unnecessary equipment suggest by lobbyists bought, or justify other unrelated efforts, but THIS time we're super serious 'fo realz and this is a big terror plot you need to worry about alright? Wait, anyone there? Hello?"

...the U.S. -- unlike many other countries -- does not have a general criminal prohibition on disclosing state secrets. It is, of course, illegal for those with an affirmative duty to safeguard secrets (such as government and military employees) to leak certain categories of classified information, but it is generally not illegal for non-governmental third parties -- such as media outlets or private citizens -- to publish that information. That's why it's extremely difficult to prosecute newspapers for publishing classified information -- such as when The New York Times published the Pentagon Papers or the story of Bush's illegal NSA spying program, or when Dana Priest exposed the CIA's network of secret black sites.

And specifically regarding the Espionage Act (same article):

Quote:

There are legal theories under the Espionage Act of 1917 which, in some very narrow cases, can make it plausible to prosecute even non-governmental actors for publishing information, but doing so is very difficult. The Bush DOJ tried and failed to invoke those theories to prosecute two AIPAC officials -- private American citizens -- who were accused of receiving classified information from a DoD official and then transmitting it to the Israeli Government and to various journalists. The Pentagon official who leaked the classified information to AIPAC (Larry Franklin) was rather easily convicted -- because the criminal laws clearly applied to him as a government employee. But it was far from clear that the AIPAC officials, as private citizens, had broken any laws.

Indeed, it took an exotic interpretation of the Espionage Act even to prosecute them at all. As The Post put it when the case was finally dismissed: they "were the first civilians not employed by the government charged under the 1917 espionage statute." Indeed, the very idea of criminalizing the mere receipt and transmission of classified information by non-government-employees is incredibly dangerous, as it would criminalize much of what investigative reporters do, which is why even harsh AIPAC critics -- such as myself -- found that AIPAC prosecution to be so chilling. There are countries (such as Britain) that criminalize all disclosures of classified information, but the U.S. is not one of them. In sum, anyone [...] declaring that WikiLeaks clearly broke U.S. law -- as though there is no real dispute about it -- reveals that they have no idea what they're talking about.

As for classifying Assange and Wikileaks as terrorists, well... that's just nightmarishly totalitarian. Sadly, I'm not counting on the "limited government" folks to see it that way. And xoa, I can't help but disagree with you--I'm afraid the public in general would be perfectly happy to see a shoplifter tarred, feathered, burned, and publicly disemboweled, to say nothing of creepy-foreign-rapist-terrorist-spy Julian Assange.

I think that a lot of this is for show. The burden of proof for these charges is much too high. In order for the burden to be satisfied, the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that:

A. The intent and purpose of Wikileaks is to harm the US.B. Wikileaks purposely provided material support for the terrorists.C. A bunch of other various criteria.

In regards to B, I don't think that this information being available on the public internet will satisfy the requirement. However, if I am wrong about that then the legal precedent is scary. Tons of crap on the internet could potentially be considered material support for terrorists. Free speech on the net would be tremendously chilled if this charge is allowed on that basis.

Transparency is GOOD. The United States is too powerful. Transparency is FAIR. WikiLeaks is a service to human rights. You cannot take down wikileaks, it is run by a board of people. If you strike him down, he will only become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

You'd think it would be enough to prosecute whoever it was that leaked the documents to Wikileaks?

But, those people who are saying, "If you don't want your documents leaked then don't do shady stuff" are pretty out of tune with the contents that were in these documents. Some of them were candid, honest assessments of world leaders and various policies but there were not a lot of things along the lines of conspiracy plots that would have made the plot of a spy movie, as far as I know. It's important that officials have a way to assess the nature of foreign dignitaries and figureheads.

Those of us old enough to remember disco are old enough to remember when it was _journalists_ who exposed government corruption. Now, journalists are just lapdogs, echo chambers, and catamites for politicians.